Though the struggle to desegregate the University of Alabama from 1952 to 1963 was more protracted and in some ways less dramatic than similar conflicts elsewhere in the South, this readable, minutely detailed chronicle adds to the histories of the era. Clark, an administrator at the university who came to teach there in 1971, criticizes the unenlightened administration at the institution. He combines interviews and documents to describe the loosely planned 1952 application of black students Autherine Lucy and Pollie Anne Myers, the university's 1956 expulsion of Lucy (Myers's admission was ultimately denied) to appease Klansmen and Citizens' Councilors and to thwart future black applicants. He also explains how ``the most logical site for quiet desegregation,'' the university's campus at Huntsville, was abandoned by both civil rights activists and intransigent Alabama Governor George Wallace. With the civil rights movement accelerating and federal troops on hand, the university finally accepted black students in 1963. (May)